Notes
mysterious and distant world of the BACKGROUND Scottish highlands located on the outskirts of Europe by certainly had David Sander dramatic appeal. It also had a reputation for barbarity and rebellion – when Italian operas featuring regicide typically did not pass the censors, they were invariably reset in Scotland (yet during La donna del lago the somewhat careless and unprotected King Giacomo could have easily been offed on more than one occasion). The technical challenge to reproduce a lake (Loch Katrine) and the craggy mountainous highlands also attracted impresarios intent on dazzling their audiences. In fact, The Lady of the Lake is the first Sir Walter Scott text to be set operatically. Virtually forgotten today, the author’s works became hugely popular during the early part of the 19th century and would inspire many composers of the Romantic Age, including Flotow, Marschner, Nicolai, Auber, Carafa, Set design by David Zinn Bellini, Pacini, Bizet and most shocked audiences only three years ear- famously, Donizetti in his popular lier in Otello with the violent onstage Lucia di Lammermoor (though Carafa murder of Desdemona followed by the had premiered his own version just a title character’s suicide. Rossini began few years earlier). Donizetti would to push the boundaries a bit, and the plunder Scott’s œuvre many times setting of a work originated by a during his career, but every text virtually unknown English author was needed a bit of pruning. The self-depwithin his realm of possibilities. recating novelist admitted his own Sir Walter Scott’s original poem tendency to not stay on task, preferring dates from 1810 and became an lush and evocative description to a instant success, its 25,000 copies quickly moving plot. He also enjoyed breaking all records for the sale of dressing his stories with a few gothic poetry to that date. The text was touches, inspired in part by contempoimmediately adapted to music the fol- raries such as Matthew Lewis (whose lowing year as The Knight of Snowdoun widely read novel, The Monk, spawned by Englishman Henry R. Bishop, first two rather gruesome operas of the late performed at Covent Garden. It is also bel canto period, Donizetti’s Maria di the first significant musical version of Rudenz and Gounod’s La nonne a Scott work, which eventually would sanglante). For The Lady of the Lake, inspire over 280 distinct productions, Scott includes his own version of an his most popular in this respect. The unruly, grizzled, second-sighted monk,
showiest tunes (unlike their Italian counterparts, Parisian contraltos weren’t quite up to the task – our production will include the quartet in addition to all of Malcom’s arias). Part of the reason La donna del lago failed at its premiere may be the nature and unfamiliarity of its source. Italian opera was just beginning to deal with French and English romantic literature, previously relying on classical themes with happy endings. Though Donna concludes joyously (the only lasting tragedy being Rodrigo’s earlier demise, offstage in the original production), Rossini had
| LA DONNA DEL LAGO
enough to decide to set it to music and had veteran librettist Andrea Leone Tottola work up the libretto right away. In addition to soprano Isabella Colbran in the title role (she starred in all nine of Rossini’s Neapolitan operas), the San Carlo’s roster of remarkable tenors necessitated the incorporation of two principal tenor roles, with Giovanni David as Uberto/Giacomo and Andrea Nozzari as Rodrigo. Malcom, who is described as young, sensitive and almost feminine in Scott’s original work, was cast as a contralto pants role with devilishly difficult music first sung by Rosmunda Pisaroni. Yet, in spite the excellent casting (though Colbran’s sense of pitch was beginning to falter), the opera failed at its premiere, with only Elena’s finale rondò “Tanti affetti” encored. Rossini was visibly upset – in one version of the events, when a stagehand urged the composer to take his bow, he was punched hard – Rossini then galloped hurriedly into the night; another more plausible report has the composer fainting from the strain. The second performance fared a little better, and La donna del lago swiftly became one of Rossini’s most popular works, quickly making its way to the capitals of Europe, including Vienna, St. Petersburg, Lisbon and Munich within five years of its completion. London saw the opera for the first time in 1823 at Her Majesty’s Theatre, Paris in 1824 at the Théâtre Italien and in New York, first in French (1829), then in Italian (1833). As with so many Rossini operas, substitutions became rampant, but the most lasting is the insertion of a quartet from Bianca e Falliero (written just after Donna) in the opera’s final scene to compensate for the loss of Malcom’s
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